Beginning Wednesday for Android users and coming soon after to iOS, the Google Photos app will be getting Chromecast support. Though Chromecast users have already been able share photos from their device to their television by mirroring their smartphone's display, the integration with Photos offers a few advantages.

While mirroring will always show exactly what appears on your display at any given moment, the Photos app will allow you to choose exactly what is displayed at all times. This way, you don't need to worry about accidentally sharing a photo you wanted to keep private while navigating between albums or photos. And, if you have photos backed up to the cloud, then you can cast photos even if they aren't stored locally on your device. (Conversely, if you only have images on your phone, and not backed up, you can cast those as well.)

The app is also getting a few updates that improve the app's search and organization. A new people labelling feature allows you to add tags to photos of specific people to make it easier to find them and keep pictures organized. This will also help make the app's search better as you'll be able to use more specific search terms like "photos of John and dogs."

Image: Google

You still can't search the Photos app with your voice, though Dave Lieb, the product lead for Photos, said that could be added in a future update, but there is a workaround. You can search your library of images with your voice using Google Now or the Google app via the "Okay, Google," command.

You could say, "Okay, Google, show me my photos of New York," for example, or "Okay, Google, show me photos of cats." The new search and people labeling feature will be available on Android beginning Wednesday with an iOS update to follow.

Finally, Google previewed a new shared albums feature that will be rolling out to the Google Photos iOS and Android app in a later update. Much like Facebook's Moments app, shared albums are meant to make it easier for people to privately share the photos they take.

The features takes advantage of the app's existing "share by link" functionality that allows you to share photos with people you know via link. With shared albums, others will be able to contribute their own photos to the stream or subscribe to updates to be notified each time new photos are added.

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